The thing that makes this movie work is not the testimony of the "designated spokesmen" who claim to carry on John Lennon's hard-core leftist "legacy." By and large these people are either hard core scam artists (i.e. Black Panthers with LOOONG criminal records pretending to "dig" nonviolence)or pathetic victims desperately clinging to lost illusions (i.e. poor crippled Ron Kovic still blaming the US government for the deadly aim of the determined NVA soldier who crippled him for life.) Where the movie works is when it catches John Lennon being himself -- jumping for joy while out for a walk with Yoko, or arguing with a very posh lady journalist from the NEW YORK TIMES who basically tells him a working class lad has "no business having opinions about what educated people do." (Hard to believe the feminist movement was once run by such a selfish, spoiled white-bread elite -- no, actually it still is!) Ironically, of all the talking heads there's only one who really seems to "get" John Lennon's attitude -- and it's actually the sole right wing guy they deigned to interview, G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy's got the Lennon attitude down perfect -- tell the truth and to hell with anyone who can't deal with it. His take on the shootings at Kent State is hands-down the most honest moment in the video, so raw and irreverent you can actually hear John Lennon howling with delight.It's a shame Lennon and Liddy never got to party together.

War is over. Is it the people you "run with" or just the fact you have a conscious and the will to speak your mind? Filmmakers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld II present for our approval an evocative glimpse at the all-out efforts of Richard Nixon's administration and J. Edgar Hoover's gestapo-like minions to gag John Ono Lennon. Former Beatle and peace activist Lennon seemed to be an enemy of the United States government and the outspoken rock 'n' roller needed to be silenced. He and his wife Yoko Ono were wiretapped and kept under big brother's watchful eye as the Vietnam War raged on and TV nightly news told of massacred U.S. troops. Lennon's anti-war efforts led to threats of deportation. This documentary is well put together and sustained with some insightful comments in between archive footage. Featured are: Mario Cuomo, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Gore Vidal, George McGovern, G. Gordon Liddy, Geraldo Rivera, Ron Kovic, Walter Cronkite and John Dean just to mention a few. This 2006 film does not shy away from explicit language, violent images or drug references.

I have not rated this movie, as I did not watch it very long after Geraldo Rivera was presented as a credible commentator.I don't know anything about the agenda or quality of this documentary that you may know if you watched past the first ten minutes. It certainly features a lot of great music and an impressive array of commentators. But if you're going to pretend to journalism, and address and exploit some of the sacred relics of counterculture, you should damn well know better than to talking-head Geraldo Rivera interchangeably with Noam Chomsky and Bobby Seale and Gore Vidal.David Leaf and John Scheinfeld are the guys behind the UNKNOWN series of hack biography/archive footage exploitation videos on old comedians. The Jonathan Winters one lets Winters commandeer the proceedings in a stream-of-consciousness performance, to mixed result, but the kinescope routines make it a keeper. Also that one does not feature Geraldo Rivera.

I am too young to really remember John Lennon being alive and what I know of him is mostly based around the Beatles and his later solo efforts which, in my view, saw him becoming a bit of a peacenik under the influence of Yoko Ono. As a result this film sat on my recorder for quite a few weeks before I got round to watching it but I am glad I did because it is actually a very interesting film that is pitched perfectly to inform viewers such as myself who perhaps did not know anything about John Lennon in the latter stages of his life.It goes without saying that the film is sympathetic to Lennon and what he was trying to do and I suppose this is a fault within the telling that the bias towards him as a person is inherently there. This will put off some viewers who simply disagree with him, draw in those that agree but to the casual viewer I doubt it will come over as a problem and indeed for me it was just something I observed rather than something that was an issue. Anyway, what the film did well for me was to acknowledge that Lennon was an artist and a peacenik but to move him beyond the images and songs that we all know. This gives him as a person more of a foundation and meaning because, viewed in context of his time he actually comes over as a key figure and an intelligent man (albeit an artist!).I'm sure some will see this as a problem because they disagree with it but the approach works. Setting the foundation and showing Lennon speaking out (in his own way) builds well to make the later persecution by Nixon's Whitehouse to be a natural progression and believable rather than being a rather sensationalist newspaper headline (or indeed like the title of the film itself). The use of archive footage is really well done as it makes rightly makes Lennon the main character while the contributions are mostly relevant and edited into the main flow well.An interesting and engaging documentary that sits as a fitting tribute to who John Lennon was, even if it focuses on a specific period in his life. Understandably slanted to the left politically, it will appeal to the casual viewer quite easily.